Saturday, February 21, 2015

One of the more strange experiences one can have is to watch yourself give a speech as recorded by someone who actually knows how to run a video camera. I watched most of the file this morning—it ran 100 minutes including the question session.

And yes, 100 minutes trying to keep up with a bunch of retired Ph.Ds wore me out!

This was a group of Minnesota liberals who knew enough of the Midwest progressive traditions to get most of my references to Thorstein Veblen and giggled at my description of the different legacies bestowed on our politics by the various Nordic immigrant groups. One audience member was especially upset that governor Scott Walker was assaulting the Wisconsin Idea and thanked me for mentioning the role of UW in the various Progressive ideas that have been successful over the years.

The videographer claimed during the speech's post-mortem that even though I was speaking to a highly educated group of Minnesota Liberals, most would be spending a bunch of time with Google before the night was over. He may be right but I did attempt to use the old Populist method of using examples that people can verify on their drive home.

Anyway, I have a 18-gig AVCHD file I hope to turn into a Youtube version of the evening. We will see if I can cram all the good stuff into a speech that lasts less than an hour. One of the main things I learned from this was that people are really interested in a description of a future that is worth living. I intend to expand on this theme in the next few months because it really is the best approach I have. Yes, the solar future can be very beautiful, we CAN employ our young in useful pursuits, economics need NOT be a dismal science, etc. Turn the Producer Classes loose on humanity's problems with sufficient resources and watch how magnificently they solve them!